The Summer House(69)
Jefferson laughs, swings off the bunk, and comes over to the cell door. “Chief, that’s pretty good. Okay.”
Kane moves around and there’s a rattling noise, and something is slid underneath the door. Jefferson bends over, picks up a wide leather belt with manacles and chains, two long enough to reach his ankles.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“Your visitor knows you’re a badass, too,” Kane says. “Just taking precautions.”
A few minutes later, as Jefferson shuffles along the corridor with his ankles shackled, his cuffed wrists secured by chains to the wide leather belt, Kane opens the interview door, and Jefferson shuffles in.
Sitting across the table is Sullivan County sheriff Emma Williams. She’s in civvy clothes, blue jeans and a black T-shirt, but her hard face and sharp eyes remind Jefferson of a Pashtun woman he once saw who had her burqa accidentally torn off when it got caught in a bus door. The look on her face toward the US soldiers standing around her was the same as he sees here from the sheriff: a raging anger barely held under control, a face failing to hide the thoughts of revenge, sharp knives, and flesh being carved out.
“Sit down,” she says, and he gives her that victory, sitting a bit clumsily with all the shackles fixed to his waist, ankles, and wrists.
“Good to see you, too,” he says.
The stone-cold angry look on her face doesn’t change. “We had an arrangement, a deal, an agreement.”
“We did,” Jefferson says. “An arrangement with me and my three Rangers. Now there’s only two other Rangers. The circumstances have changed. The deal has changed.”
Williams says, “No, it hasn’t.”
“Well, so says you,” Jefferson says. “But right now there’s signed paperwork with your district attorney, witnessed by an Army lawyer, that says otherwise.”
“The district attorney, he works for me,” Williams says. “You won’t get away with it.”
He smiles. “Give it your best, Sheriff. But it won’t work. Guarantee it.”
She moves her chair over so she’s closer to him, lowers her voice. “You signed those papers, you signed the obituary for you and your Rangers. This is my county, my land, and I make the rules. Remember that.”
Jefferson scrapes his chair closer, too. “Here’s a story for you, Sheriff. Non-PC, so I apologize in advance.”
“I don’t have time for your tales,” she says.
He says, “Oh, you’ll love this story. Once upon a time an Air Force plane was flying over a remote part of New Guinea when it crashed in a storm. There were three survivors: an Air Force airman, a Navy seaman, and an Army Ranger. They were captured by a tribe of headhunters—see, I told you it wasn’t PC—and the chief said that they were trespassers on his sacred soil and that they were all sentenced to death. But the method of their deaths was up to them. The chief said if they each committed suicide, their skins would be tanned and turned into sacred canoes, and their spirits would live forever among the tribe. If not, then they’d suffer weeks of torture before dying anyway. On a wooden table were a number of weapons. Faced with this horrible choice, the airman picked up a poison capsule, took it, and said, ‘Hurray for the Air Force.’ The seaman saw a rusty revolver with one round in it, and before shooting himself in the head, said, ‘Hurray for the Navy.’”
Jefferson grins at seeing the sheriff hanging on his every word. “Then it came to the Army Ranger. He saw the table full of weapons and then went to another table, which had kitchen utensils, picked up a long two-tined fork and started stabbing himself furiously, up and down his arms, legs, even his chest and abdomen, punching it in, and soon he was bleeding from dozens of wounds. Just before he passed out from blood loss, the tribal chief said, ‘Why did you pick such a painful way to die?’ And the Army guy looked up and said, ‘I’m an Army Ranger. Fuck you and your sacred canoe.’”
Jefferson stands up, heads to the door, where he will hammer on the door and ask to go back to his cell.
“Same to you, Sheriff,” he says.
Chapter 63
SPECIAL AGENT CONNIE YORK spots the correct street number on the mailbox marking the home of Peggy Reese of the Sullivan County Times, and she parks the Ford sedan a few yards up the road. They are in a small housing development of double-wide trailers with carports.
After Cook’s orders hours back, Sanchez spent some time under both vehicles, searching the undercarriages with a flashlight, and said, “Looks clean. I don’t think they’re tracking us in our rentals.” As she switches off the engine and hands the keys over to Sanchez, she thinks this was at least one bit of good news before they all started this early Wednesday morning.
“I’ve got my phone, and I’ve got my service weapon,” Connie says.
“I still don’t like it,” Sanchez says. “For all we know, that woman is a cousin of the sheriff and is ready to take a wrench to your head. You know how everybody down here is always somebody’s uncle, aunt, second or third cousin.”
York opens the door. “Well, if that’s true, let’s hope she’s estranged.”
She walks up the asphalt and then along the driveway. A dog is barking somewhere, and up ahead, a light is on over the front door. Flying insects are making a moving halo around the globe.